5-year Program Will Map Birds' Habitats

In January bird watchers across the state will launch a five-year campaign to map the places birds live and to detail their breeding habits.

The Florida Breeding Bird Atlas program is a cooperative effort of the Florida Audubon Society and the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission that will involve 2,000 volunteers.

The program's $270,000 is being underwritten primarily through a $4 surcharge on Florida license tags for people moving from out of state. The surcharge went into effect last year.

The program is the most ambitious bird study ever in Florida, and organizers say it will provide invaluable help to governments trying to curb development in environmentally sensitive areas.

''When the atlas is completed we'll be able to go back in five, 10, 15 years and see what has happened to the breeding habits. That's something we can't do now,'' said James Cox, a biologist for the state game and fish commission and a member of the Florida Breeding Bird Atlas Advisory Board.

Cox said organizers hope the bird atlas will encourage similar studies for other kinds of wildlife.

The Audubon Society has been involved primarily in counting birds, but this project involves a great deal more. Bird watchers won't be interested in the number of birds they see. They will try to discover where species breed in Florida and to learn something about their mating habits.

Organizers say the program will:

-- Provide a systematic survey of the state to collect breeding data for all bird species.

-- Plot breeding information on a series of maps.

-- Get accurate information on the status of rare birds so that their needs can be addressed when people are making decisions about land use.

-- Provide base line data so changes in the environment and its effect on bird breeding can be charted.

C. Wesley Biggs, atlas coordinator for the Florida Audubon Society which is based in Maitland, said his group has coordinators for the project in 55 of the state's 67 counties and is in good shape to begin the project the first of the year.

However, volunteers still are needed, and workers don't have to be bird experts, Biggs said.

''We're more than willing to train people,'' he said. ''We need people who are interested and like to spend time in the woods.''

The nine regional coordinators are holding training workshops for workers. County coordinators also are scheduling workshops for their helpers.

Breeding atlases are relatively new.

The first was in the late 1960s and early 1970s when 1,500 observers surveyed Britain. That atlas provided 12 transparent overlay maps with different topographical and ecological factors such as water courses, rainfall and elevation, and how each related to bird breeding.

Its usefulness became apparent to other countries, and breeding atlas projects began elsewhere in Europe and spread to Australia, Asia, Africa and North America.

In this country, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Marin County, Calif., have begun or completed bird breeding atlas programs.